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pumpkinpuss writes "The US military yesterday shot down a missile in a test simulating a long-range ballistic missile attack by a potential adversary such as North Korea or Iran. The target missile was launched from Kodiak Island, Alaska, at 3:04 PM Eastern time, tracked simultaneously by several ground and ship-based radars, and intercepted by a 'kill vehicle' 3,000 kilometers away over the Pacific 25 minutes later, according to the Missile Defense Agency. Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly said, 'The kill vehicle was sent to a very accurate spot in space giving us great confidence.'"
Reader gilgsn points out the testing of a different "multiple kill vehicle" by Lockheed Martin, which was able to hover over the ground and track a target. Video of the test (WMV) is also available.

I can understand N. Korea since they can actually reach the Aleutians... but Iran? I'd like to see some propaganda that actually is realistic and Iran coming up with a missile that can reach the US is something of a fairy tale.

... why does it matter now anyway? It's not like the people living in those areas NOW are affected by whatever happened earlier? One still live where one live. Also we're all just humans, borders and owning more land when what you need to live on don't make much sense anyway.

I give a nice sarcastic "boohoo" to both sides. Both are racist morons blinded by religion and a baseless sense of entitlement. Both like embittered 2 year olds who don't get their way, except armed with tanks, missiles, and suicide bombs.

I haven't found much of a reason to feel much pity for either side. I'm not religious, so I don't buy the "god gave this to us" crap, nor do I think the events of 2500 years ago has much relevance on the land claims of today. So there goes the Jewish side of the argument. I also don't think that killing innocent civilians just because you don't like your neighbors garners much respect (this is true for both sides), especially when you decide to kill your neighbors distant relatives and relations (true mostly for Palestine), or decide to teach your children first how to hate (true for both sides, but more towards the Palestinians), and to commit suicide for no real reason.

I think the US should just leave both sides to fend for themselves. Helping either side is morally murky, being that both sides cross the boundaries. Picking sides in this conflict has done NOTHING to help the US, and much to hurt us. I don't even get why it is a damn issue.

They will have to learn to live together, and compromise (the mature, rational, and intelligent answer), or annihilate each other (the answer they want).

That is a great example of extreme relativis, both sides are hardly equals. But anyway, we should support Israel because they're the modern, liberal democracy, because they're an ally of the US, and because we fight a common enemy such as Hamas. Their country also produces great minds and makes large contributions to society in science and technology.

I can understand N. Korea since they can actually reach the Aleutians... but Iran?

I think Iran and North Korea are simply the easiest threats to identify right now. What this system is designed to do is counter any country that is not deterred by the threat of massive retaliation. Whether it be Iran, North Korea, a destabilized Russia, or a fundamentalist lead Pakistan, this system should give pause to any suicidal leader who is willing to trade the annihilation of his country for the chance to wipe out at least one American city.

That being said, by the time Iran acquires the ability to launch ICBMs at the US, this program may actually work as advertised.

So since we've got some tiny islands that N Korea could barely reach if it got really lucky, that N Korea could benefit from attacking only by escalating a shooting war with the US, we should... polish the trigger and load the gun?

If N Korea could hit something that actually damaged US ability to counterattack militarily, economically, or - last resort, like always - diplomatically (like cut off their trade with all their neighbors), then we might want to consider an antimissile defense. But the Aleutians a

So since we've got some tiny islands that N Korea could barely reach if it got really lucky, that N Korea could benefit from attacking only by escalating a shooting war with the US, we should... polish the trigger and load the gun?

I think this is an arms race. Right now North Korea can only hit some tiny islands, and our tests only work in well controlled simulations. The hope is, by the time Korea can hit our mainland with nukes, we have a fully functional and completely deployed version of this technology. We can't just sit on our hands and wait for Korea(or Iran, or Pakistan) to obtain the capacity, and will, to hit us before we start the decades long research and development.

If they hit them, we'd suffer minimal loss, and N Korea would finally find itself facing the most global opposition possible. It would be a boon to the US, just as Georgia's attacking Russia finally gave Russia the chance to slap down its Georgia nuisance.

What we are preparing for is the nuclear ICBM equivalent of a suicide bomber. The coldly logical, and successful, strategies of MAD do not hold when confronted with an opponent that doesn't care if they face "the most global opposition possible". Losing a large American city to a nuclear ICBM is not at all equal to Russia's "Georgia nuisance".

We're already in a MAD situation with NK, and we have been ever since we SK and the US gained a clear economic and military foothold over NK.

Nuclear weapons are not needed for the pseudo-MAD situation that exists on the Korean peninsula. North Korea will devastate Seoul (capitol of the 13th largest economy in the world, and where 20% of the South Korean population lives) using long-range artillery, mounted on railroad tracks and easily able to slide back into mountain caves. Even though the US likely has

In relative terms, North Korea's economy currently is far worse than that of East Germany was in 1990. The income per capita ratio (PPP) was about 3:1 in Germany (about US$25,000 for West, about US$8,500 for East). The ratio is about 13:1 in Korea (over US$24,200 for South, US$1,800 for North, CIA Factbook 2006), although GDP estimates vary widely. This income gap is rapidly increasing as the North Korean economy stagnates and the South Korean economy is characterized by moderate to high economic growth.

Since when defending yourself against attacks from (Russian-sponsored) terrorists from YOUR OWN TERRITORY "attacking Russia"?

Wake up, mate. Even the US DoD had eventually confirmed [kommersant.com] that it was Georgia that launched the all-out attack on South Ossetia, not the other way around. And yes, they did attack the Russian peacekeepers (under UN mandate!) in the process - a notable part of all Russian casualties in that war were peacekeepers in buildings that were deliberately shelled without warning.

Posts like this are a perfect example of why we need a "-1: Proudly ignorant" or "-1: Sanctimonious moron" or perhaps "-1: Dr. Goebbels" moderation.

As it is patently obvious to anyone who followed the Georgia/Russia conflagration to any degree, it was the Georgians who launched a surprise attack on South Ossetia in order to "reclaim it" from the local Russian-speaking population, an attack involving firing Grad missiles indiscriminately into civilian dwellings, not to mention that the advancing Georgian troops targeted specifically the Russian peacekeeping force deployed in the separatist region.

I am absolutely positive that this same very poster was whining with high histrionics about Serbian forces under Milosevich in Kosovo and jumped up and down on his sofa cheering on the NATO bombing of Belgrad. Not to mention that he likely had an erection when "Shock and Awe" started in Iraq.

They tossed one over Japan a couple of years ago. That means they've solved a lot of the fundamental problems, and what they have left to do is mostly a question of scale and manufacturing ability.

The vast majority of people in North Korea may live like medieval peasants, but that's because their leadership keeps whatever material wealth the country can generate to themselves, or they sink it into arms production. They should not be underestimated.

I would guess that the U.S. government has better intelligence than you and I do.

I suppose that is a crazy assumption to make, but so is assuming that North Korea has assume tech that the U.S. government doesn't know about.

That's not what Kadin2048 was saying at all. He was saying the North Korea has tech that the grandparent apparently didn't know existed.

As Kadin2048 said, North Korea has very impressive missiles development programs. Not only impressive considering their economy is borked, but because they are also a rather effective weapon. North Korea sells its designs to other countries, and that's not any secret info. It's one of the ways they make money aside from counterfeiting world currencies, smuggling drugs in

No, North Korea conducts their own missile development, and probably with little involvement from the Chinese. North Korea likely exchanges technology with a small number of mostly Middle-Eastern states, such as Syria, Iran, and former Iraq.

I can understand N. Korea since they can actually reach the Aleutians... but Iran? I'd like to see some propaganda that actually is realistic and Iran coming up with a missile that can reach the US is something of a fairy tale.
Maybe using it to stop a missile from reaching Israel.......

You answered your own question. Iran is a missile threat versus countries such as Israel, Turkey, and Europe, which are allies. Keep in mind that a good bit of the missile defense system will be located in Israel and Eastern Europe.

I can understand N. Korea since they can actually reach the Aleutians... but Iran? I'd like to see some propaganda that actually is realistic and Iran coming up with a missile that can reach the US is something of a fairy tale.

I don't understand why it's automatically assumed that this defense system will be both stationary and based in the US. The ultimate goal of this project is to create a deployable theater-wide defense system. Remember the Gulf War, and all that crap with the Scud missiles? Those were nuclear-lift capable ballistic missile systems.

At the moment Iran and North Korea are the ones who seem like they might have the ill will to fire a missile at the US or at some other nation which might be under the protection of the US antimissile system. That does not mean this will continue to be the case.

Having a system capable of shooting down a high flying ballistic missile could come in extremely handy in the near or more distant future. These systems take a lot of time to develop and having one in the inventory is something that may very w

What a beautiful machine! I really love it's completely evil and aggressive look. The way the camera shakes because of the massive amounts of unergy it uses to keep hovering. This thing will be a hit computergame enemy.I am a pacifist but i love military tech. Is that sick?

Lots of room for criticism there though unfortunately.- unlike the predator, you're certainly not going to shadow anything with THAT. It's low, it's big, it's visually very obvious, it's LOUD, and it's got a worthless "loiter time".- they launched it each time from a hover pit. A bit like they use when testing prototype hovering planes similar to the harrier, where they're worried that engine backwash or hot air ingestion is going to cause it problems. Requiring a hover pit for real world aunch is a prob

"The Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) system allows more than one kill vehicle to be launched from a single booster. The system consists of a carrier vehicle with on board sensors and a number of small, simple kill vehicles that can be independently targeted against objects in a threat cluster. The integrated payload is designed to fit on existing and planned interceptor boosters."

No. Look at entertainment, if you judged people by the entertainment they watched the prisons would be full. We like the idea of destroying stuff and violence, but does liking violent movies like SAW 3 - make everyone who watches it sick?

The truth is humans (generally) are infinitely curious they want to explore every nook and cranny of existence, I would imagine most people would try / watch or do anything once within that individuals limits, if no

Actually, I think that missile defense makes a lot more sense in this era. While it was certainly a destabilizing force in the cold war (in a maddeningly "War is Peace" kind of way,) the calculus changes completely when you're dealing with the asymmetric challenges of rogue states and the remote possibility of an non-state entity getting access to a few missiles. In the new case, MAD is in no way going to prevent them from launching, and wouldn't prevent us from using ours on them, due to the sheer difference in number.

Also, in a purely technical sense missile defense makes more sense with asymmetric threats, because theres no way such a system could shoot down half of Russia's arsenal flying at us, we'd have to have double or triple the number of interceptors, based on what I can tell of general precision. However, if its only one or two, or one that got fired off by accident, throwing multiple interceptors at it is totally worthwhile.

Really, I think the biggest risk is upsetting Russia with it, even though it really doesn't make sense because there's no way we could stop a barrage from them. But demagogues and presidents trying to look tough on the world stage won't necessarily approach it logically, at least not in public.

Like you said, Russia won't care. I really doubt they have that kind of Chaotic-Evil feel to them to go in balls deep and blast the american continent with nuclear weapons. I can understand a lot of tension, a lot of flying fs flung around (and already have because the price of gas is dropping) but there's no chance of an all-out invasion. Realistically 1989 was the most peaceful year; assuming the Gulf War didn't start until the year after?

Depends. If you are struck awesome by a video of a slow nerv gas working, I would presume you have some problems to cope with. If you like the high tech stuff and explosions; well, people are naturally drawn to that. And of course also to the thin line between living and death as occurs on the battlefield.

Of course, watching some horribly wounded people on battlefields should quickly quench anybody's blood thirst. Maybe that's why we see so little of that on TV, save on terrorist attacks (where most picture

Here's a point for a similar discussion: Why do a large portion of the population see an explosion and think, "Wow..."? I'm trying to figure out why that is. I also think the same thing, and it feels like a low-level, "fundamental" kind of thought. It's not my brain saying "oh my god, think about the technology and the increasing advancement of humanity, etc." Rather, it's just my brain seeing a neat explosion and saying "wow".

I love how the Pentagon are hailing this as a success [google.com]
even though the part that they were supposedly trying to test, (i.e. whether the system can be fooled by a balloon), completely failed to deploy.

By all accounts, these tests are completely rigged, and the system can be fooled by the simplest of tactics. The only way to really test it, is to set up a game, where you allow a completely independent team to try to fool the system and another team to try to shoot it down.
It is really dangerous to kick off another cold war in order to deploy a system which is a complete fraud. This is yet another way to funnel money to defense contractors...

They spent $120US Million on this test. Would you want to be the one who has to say it was a failure?

Also, from TFA:

"The key to our protection . . . is to be able to have all of these different sensors simultaneously tracking" and recognizing the same object, which they did for the first time in yesterday's test, he said. "The kill vehicle was sent to a very accurate spot in space," he said, adding that the result "does give us great confidence."

To me, reading between the lines there, that sounds like they sent the kill vehicle to a pre-determined spot and managed to get the target to be there at the same time.

This whole program has been a HUGE boondoggle since its inception. I hope the new administration has the cojones to finally rein these guys in and tell them to spend the money on something more useful, such as fixing up the hopsitals we send our troops to.

I don't know why you're assuming that the goal of the test was to show the system worked perfectly and could not be fooled. Doesn't it make sense to test the components -- you know, like a multi-sensor, multi-location tracking system, and the launch and guidance system of a kill vehicle -- even if the entire system is not yet functional?

I'm not saying this program is necessarily a good idea, but it seems unreasonable to assume that tests are only done on a final product, or that a failure to meet acceptance criteria means the test was a waste of money -- if it passed every test criteria on the first try wouldn't it just be a waste of money to test in the first place?

In the long term the goal is to produce a weapon capable of intercepting an ICBM threat to the USA.
In the short term, the goal is to produce sufficient success to allow the contractor to apply for more funds to continue research and pad the companies profit margin. Sadly, I would guess that goal #2 is more important than goal #1 to the contractors.

I know the russians systems are supposed to be working well. But could someone give some links to various systems or explain some differences and so on? Will this one be superior to the russians systems if they get it to work? Or are the russians systems so good enough that it doesn't really matter? Are there any known development of better systems by the russians?

Just because a part of the test didn't work right doesn't mean it was rigged. It means there were errors in the test. Nothing new here. Back in 2001, a radar failed a missile defense test because of a programming error. I'd chalk it up more to someone probably making a mistake than THE MAN rigging the test. More chance of a piece of equipment that failed to operate correctly than some massive conspiracy.

No kidding. If you ever want a good cry, read through the deliverables on a government contract--any contract. They are basically worded so that if there is not a paper clip provided to bind up a report, then the contractor doesn't have to do anything and still gets to charge for a day of work. Amazing.

Somebody mod this guy up for insight. Other people need to mod him down for not recognizing the insight.

If you build and deploy a system that can do a good job of defeating the Bad Guy's current threat arsenal, he has to upgrade his entire system, and that ain't gonna be cheap, even with e.g. Soviet gulag slave labor. In fact, it will probably cost him a lot more to design, produce, and deploy new missiles than it cost you to design, produce, and deploy the antimissile system that forced his upgrade cycle

it is a system to fend of retaliatory attacks from nations who are experiencing US military aggression already

True! The so-called "missile defense" system is in fact aggressive rather than defensive in posture. It is the shield you need to have in one hand while you club somebody with a weapon held in the other hand. It's useless to ward off attack from a strong enemy (unless you have launched a devastating surprise attack against them already), and it's useless against an sneak attack even from a weak enem

Strong enemies can saturate the system by using their nuclear triads (SLBM, land-based ICBM, and aircraft-launched), so it cannot be a viable shield against a strong opponent.

OTOH, the whole spectrum of missle defense tech is worth pursuing because weaker opponents have or will have nukes. We need a defense against both tactical and strategic missiles because they are proliferating and will be in the hands of enemies willing to use them.

it is a system to fend of retaliatory attacks from nations who are experiencing US military aggression already

True! The so-called "missile defense" system is in fact aggressive rather than defensive in posture. It is the shield you need to have in one hand while you club somebody with a weapon held in the other hand. It's useless to ward off attack from a strong enemy (unless you have launched a devastating surprise attack against them already), and it's useless against an sneak attack even from a weak enemy. Frankly the idea that Iran, DPRK, Venezuela, etc, would attack the US with ICBMs is simply ludicrous.

Your idea is not a new one. While an effective missile shield is rather destabilizing to MAD, it's much like locking your house when you leave to protect against thieves, and I doubt you consider that to be an aggressive posture. Potentially defending yourself from small-scale ICBM attacks or thievery may not necessarily be worth a 100-billion-dollar lock, but I'm only talking about the merits of the system in this comment, and I think your post is a little off.

If we didn't have the ballistic defense system, then a ballistic attack would work. If we have the ballistic defense system, opponents are less likely to attempt a ballistic attack. It's effectively a deterrent, so that now we can focus on the problems you've brought up. If all we did was address the problems you brought up then our solution would be "obsolete" because they would just fire a missile at us. Don't confuse something that's a deterrent with something that's useless: we have to defend against ev

I'm not a warmonger or anything like that, but if the system has a 1 in 10 chance of stopping a nuclear missile or other rogue missile launched at a U.S. city (say mine), i'd rather have that chance than zero chance if we don't have the system.

You say Obama will just fix all the countries hating us with his new world diplomacy, but there will always be people who don't like us (this isn't Star Trek Utopia), so the likelihood of there being at some point in the future some sort of threat similar to this to us or one of our allies, is highly likely.

They've had many successes with the system so far and already have it deployed on some ships and land-based areas. Also, who says if a real missile were launched at us we wouldn't launch multiple kill vehicles. If we have 50 interceptors sitting at one base and a missile coming in, nothing says you can't launch more than one to try to take it down and/or deal with the counter measures.

Belgium, New Zealand, and Sweden still exist because more powerful countries like the USA and Britain fought to keep them safe.

The Allies freed Belgium after it surrendered 4 years prior; the Allies' huge sacrifices in the Philippines kept the Australian mainlands from invasion; and NATO's military presence and political weight in Europe after the war kept many countries from being absorbed by the Soviet Union.

The US may be a big bully, but without it as a counterbalance to the other expansionist forces the

I'd argue that those countries don't have nearly the global influence and impact (good or bad) that the United States does. I'm not saying that out of national pride, it's just the truth.

The U.S. is a bigger target because our policies and funding affect more people. We choose to support a country such as say, Israel, and now we have 10 other countries hating our guts because they don't like Israel. What you are arguing for is isolationism, but that has its own issues. If we quit allying with other coun

I'm not a warmonger or anything like that, but if the system has a 1 in 10 chance of stopping a nuclear missile or other rogue missile launched at a U.S. city (say mine), i'd rather have that chance than zero chance if we don't have the system.

And if deploying such a system destabilizes the strategic balance so that a nuclear war is significantly more likely to start in the first place, your odds calculation fails.

We already have a way to prevent anyone from launching an ICBM at the US, or a NATO ally, or Israel. A method that has a proven track record, and doesn't require gimmicks and rigged tests to seem worth something. It's called "enough nukes to turn the country launching a missile into a glass parking lot". MAD works, and unless it's Russia (maybe China) then it wouldn't even be "Mutually".

Say whatever you want about suicide bombers and martyrs. The leaders of Iran, North Korea, Russia, and whatever other possible nuclear threat you want to name, are not suicidal, not idiots, and not about to sacrifice all the power they've acquired and their entire country in order to destroy a city or two before being completely wiped out.

Obama's not going to make all our enemies stop hating us. Much more likely, he's just going to start mending relations with our allies. He's also not going to go and preemptively invade North Korea, or try to liberate a few more Muslim countries. So he doesn't have to make our enemies like us, he only has to not attack them and force them to retaliate in order to make it nearly inconceivable that a nuclear ICBM would be launched at us.

No, what we have to worry about are shipping container nukes, suitcase nukes, whatsit we can hide in the bottom of a fishing boat nukes. Nobody who wants to launch a preemptive strike is going to give us a hemisphere-sized parabolic fucking ARROW pointed at them, much less a chance to shoot their device down. They're going to smuggle a nuke in so we never see it coming. Which makes a missile shield kinda worthless for defense against a first strike. It'll just be sitting there doing nothing when the bomb goes off.

This, by the way, is why some theorize that the true purpose of the shield is to allow us to launch a first strike, and counter any missile-based retaliation. Russia says so, anyway. I don't really buy it, though I'm sure it's a bullet point feature in the minds of some. I just don't see it being politically acceptable or necessary any time soon, especially not based on assuming the defense shield can reduce the cost to us to an acceptable level. Russia, at least, has nothing to worry about. Their stockpile has deteriorated, but it's still enough to put the M in MAD. A 75% effective defense field wouldn't cut it, much less 10%. If they can even hack that, when Russia also has the tech to play the measure/counter-measure game and use the built-in advantage of being the attacker.

It may not be useless to have around, just in case, I suppose. I haven't been very impressed with their "successes", it seems like more of a boondoggle than anything and I don't think it shouldn't be a priority. Our priority should be the biggest threats, and well, ICBMs just aren't it.

I'm not a warmonger or anything like that, but if the system has a 1 in 10 chance of stopping a nuclear missile or other rogue missile launched at a U.S. city (say mine), i'd rather have that chance than zero chance if we don't have the system.

There are other implications to this game. Missile defense was forbidden by treaties between the US and the USSR (as that other guy said, however, treaties are just paper) because it would hollow out mutual assured destruction. If one of the two superpowers believed t

It's been known for quite a while in defense circles that it's generally a poor idea to have a weapojg, defensive or offensive, that can be gotten around at miniscule cost to the other side.

For example, defensive missles, due to the basic geometry of the scenario, can only protect from missles coming through a very narrow cone. You see missles can't slew sideways worth a darn when in boost, and not at all post-boost. The incoming missle is bearing down at 18,000 MPH or more, even a small angle off results in an impossible to hit target. I know, in the movies and artistic simulations you ALWAYS see missles hit at ridiculous angles, but in the real world it's a no-go.

So all the bad guys have to do is target a place that is a couple hundred miles from the nearest interceptor base, or launch from an unusual angle, or use low-trajectory missles, or use say a Cessna to deliver the bomb. Voila, or whatever the word is in NK-speak, you've bypassed a trillion dollar defense system.

Part of Ronald Reagans huge increase in military spending was SDI. Ignoring the ABM treaty they tried to make a "missle shield" work in the 80s. And it didn't work. And apparently it is far from working now. But the effects are the same. They are pouring massive amounts of money into it and only get a new arms race, but no added security (remember, it doesn't work at all in real conditions, the test was to send a "kill vehicle" and a rocket to a pre determined spot to have them meet there and were watching

We don't need it anyway. If we are attacked during the Obama administration, he would call up the people that launched the missile, and after they talk, the aggressors will will see it Obama's way and press the self destruct button.

If I was in a higher position of power in a nation whose leader just openly provoked the US by destroying a city, I'd be quite open to the idea of destroying any records that could implicate me, then creating a coup that would hand over those responsible for the attack.

Anyone who had dirt on me would either be equally guilty and part of the coup, or killed resisting arrest.

By golly your right, all we have to do is treat every psychopathic tyrant willing to sacrifice his nation's entire population to satisfy his narcissistic rages with a little respect and sing Kumbya and all will be right with the world!

Tell you what, we'll let you loose in a prison ward for a few hours and see how far respect gets you.

Respect only works with people that care what you think, or indeed hold rational views. How much respect is Obama really going to garner from people that already consider him a "House Boy"? A demure posture of "respect" would only reinforce beliefs and a distinct lack of respect they already hold.

Obama realizes this as well, which is why he picked the people he did for Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and so on. In that sense he seems far wiser tahn many of his supporters.

Troll my ass. The entire point with the missile shield is for rogue nations and terrorists attacks. Being nice and treating someone with respect isn't what these people are after. In other words, there are some places where there is no place for respect because the people listening don't fucking care. You people need to wake the hell up before you get someone killed.

Of course, the real issue is which probability is higher: somebody lobbing one ICBM at us and the system successfully working, vs. the system causing increased tensions with Russia which gives a freer hand to China, Iran, etc.

Also it's far less devastating for many reasons. First of all, it probably hits something low-value instead of the carefully selected target. Second of all, those ideas about plutonium (which probably isn't the material in use) getting equally distributed to every person's lungs are pure fantasy.

Is there anyone out there that see an actual point to any of this(besides wasting craploads of our money?) at all? Even NK wouldn't be stupid enough to launch at us thanks to Mutually Assured Destruction(MAD) because with today's tracking tech ANY country that launches at one of the big boys, be it USA,China,Russia,etc will have serious death rained down on them from above. So the only groups that can use this is countries like Israel who have to deal with the(frankly shitty) home made crap rockets and shor

Yes, but this is like putting a laser cannon mounted over the door while having a giant hole in the side of the house! Our borders are a giant leaking sieve that would be trivial to sneak a weapon through, especially if you brought it in pieces and assembled it afterward. So IMHO wasting this HUGE amount of money(which we frankly don't have to waste ATM) while a much more dangerous and easier to exploit security hole just lies there waiting to be taken advantage of. This is IMHO proof that Washington doesn

By the time North Korea and Iran can reliably nuke mainland USA, it'll be too late to build an ICBM defence. We can't just wake up one day, realize that we need an ICBM defense, and go pick one up at Walmart. If we keep up the effort, we probably have just barely enough time to get this deployed.

Border protection is great too. BTW, it's being blocked by people who actually like having Mexicans streaming over the border. For some

Nuke in a backpack would be a handy terror weapon, but would be fairly mild in all reality. Certainly not the city-leveling capacity that an ICBM has.

IMHO, the missile shield is just there to make Iran's job of building up a nuke deterrent very, very expensive and not just a matter of maintaining a few missiles. The same way stealth aircraft are not infallible but made it very expensive to guard your airspace.

That is a knock off of our KV and is launched on our Sea Based AMB system off of one of their Kongo class destoyers - thier big innovation is reallt the nose cone that splits on half so that they don't have to change pitch during the intercept to jettison the nose cone.

However when they tested their system, they launched against a simulated missile not a real target, and the missile was launched off our ship (the Lake Erie). (I was at this test it was in '06 called Stellar Tsuru.)

While I totally agree with you (I worked for years on the Aegis sea based ABM effort)... at this point I have to wonder just exactly WHAT we would be defenseless against with out this system.

We have an effective sea based system that can be deployed (and more importantly, moved) to protect our cities if it ever came to that. The sea based system works better, is far cheaper, and is much more survivable. Plus it doesn't require radars in the Russians backyard, which quite frankly I can see why that pissed